The Samsung Galaxy Rush is an inexpensive way to get Android 4.0 on Boost Mobile, but you won't forget that it's a budget smartphone.

The $149.99 Samsung Galaxy Rush is one of Boost Mobile's latest smartphones to run Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), and it's also one of the least expensive. Unfortunately, that modest price tag comes at a cost of its own. From the budget look and feel of the Galaxy Rush, to the middling performance, it's hard to forget that you're getting what you paid for.

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Design and Call QualityMeasuring 4.84 by 2.36 by 0.47 inches (HWD) and weighing 4.2 ounces, the Galaxy Rush is light enough, though a bit on the thick side. The phone is made entirely of cheap, shiny plastic, with a faux-metal battery cover and a faux-silver band around the middle. Something about the phone feels oddly hollow—if you grasp it firmly you can actually feel a vibration take place from somewhere inside. Suffice it to say you won't be mistaking this for a luxury device.

The display is a 3.5-inch TFT LCD with just 480-by-320-pixel resolution. Text and images often look jagged, and even with the screen brightness set to the maximum, it looks a little dim and sad. There are three capacitive touch buttons beneath the screen that sometimes feel unresponsive due to the phone's overall slower performance.

The Galaxy Rush is a single-band (1900) CDMA phone that runs on Sprint's 3G network. There's also 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi. Reception was average and call quality was good in my tests. Voices sounded loud and full in the earpiece, though just a touch fuzzy. Calls made with the phone sounded a little muffled but featured good background noise cancellation. The speakerphone sounded fine and should be just loud enough to use outdoors. Calls also sounded fine over a Jawbone Era headset and voice dialing worked over Bluetooth without issue. Battery life was good, at 7 hours and 16 minutes of talk time.

Data Plans and NetworkThe best reason to get a phone on Boost is to tap into the carrier's inexpensive pricing plans. Android plans start at $55 per month for unlimited data, talk time, and texts. That amount is reduced by $5 every 6 months you pay your bill on time, until you reach $40. If you don't need as much talk time, you can get a similar plan from Virgin Mobile, but with 300 voice minutes, for just $35 per month. But for either carrier, there is a downside for heavy data users: After 2.5GB of full-speed data usage per month, your speeds will be throttled significantly until the end of your billing cycle.

As we discovered in our Fastest Mobile Networks report, Sprint has the slowest 3G speeds of all the carriers we tested. That means that all 3G-only Sprint, Boost, and Virgin phones are running at some pretty challenged speeds, including the Galaxy Rush. 4G WiMAX support offers a major boost to phones like HTC EVO Design 4G and the Samsung Galaxy S II 4G, but those phones are also a lot more expensive. Still, if you live in the coverage area, make sure to take that into account when making your decision.

Performance, Android, and AppsThe Galaxy Rush is powered by a single-core 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8655 processor, which has seen better days. Benchmarks scores were slightly below average compared with other midrange devices, and a general sluggishness abounds while using the phone. It's still powerful enough to do all of the basics, but expect some slow down here and there.

You get Android 4.0.4 (Ice Cream Sandwich), and it's unlikely that the Galaxy Rush will receive an update to Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) in the near future, if at all, so what you see is what you get. What you get here, then, is a straightforward build of Android, without any customizations by Samsung. Boost has added MobileID, which allows you to install various "ID packs" on your phone that include applications, ringtones, wallpapers, and widgets. There's also some bloatware like an app store from Samsung, and you can't delete any of what's been preinstalled. You also get all of the typical Android benefits. There are five home screens you can customize to your liking. And you should be able to run most of the 600,000+ apps in the Google Play store, though more advanced games will likely run a bit slowly.

Multimedia, Camera, and Conclusions The phone packs 1.91GB of free internal storage. There's also an empty microSD card slot on the left-side panel, in which my 32 and 64GB SanDisk cards worked fine. Music sounded good through Altec Lansing Backbeat Bluetooth headphones, though there was an audible hiss when using a wired pair. I was able to play back all of our audio test files except for FLAC. For video, the phone handled all of our files at resolutions up to 720p except for DivX.

The 3.2-megapixel camera with LED flash is standard low-end. Shutter speeds were slow, at 1.2 seconds on average. Test photos looked decent, with reasonable detail, though colors looked a little drab. The camera records smooth video at 30 frames per second, but it does so at a miniscule 640-by-480 resolution. You do get a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, so at least video chat is an option here.

In the end, the Samsung Galaxy Rush is a good reflection of its price. It isn't terrible, but it definitely looks, feels, and performs like a bargain phone. The Kyocera Hydro is a little bit less expensive, and basically has the same specs, though it also features a waterproof design you can use in the rain or the shower. If you like to text, the Samsung Transform Ultra also has similar features but adds a nice slide-out QWERTY keyboard, though it's stuck on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). And if you're willing to increase your budget considerably, the HTC EVO Design 4G and Samsung Galaxy S II 4G both have larger, sharper displays, 4G WiMAX support, better cameras, and faster processors.

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About the Author

Alex Colon is the managing editor of PCMag's consumer electronics team. He previously covered mobile technology for PCMag and Gigaom.
Though he does the majority of his reading and writing on various digital displays, Alex still loves to sit down with a good, old-fashioned, paper and ink book in his free time. (Not that there's anything wrong wit... See Full Bio

Samsung Galaxy Rush (Boost Mobi...

Samsung Galaxy Rush (Boost Mobile)

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